Drugs acting by stimulating the immune responses have been immensely successful in the treatment of cancer. Several classes of immunotherapeutics including cytokines such as interleukin-2 (IL-2) and interferon-α2b (IFN-α2b), monoclonal antibodies against immune checkpoints, autologous dendritic cells expressing tumor antigen, genetically engineered oncolytic viruses, and T-cells engineered to expressed chimeric antigen receptors (CAR-T cells), have been approved for multiple cancer subtypes, including both solid tumors, as well as hematological cancers. Durable response rates are considered as the greatest advantages of immunotherapy but its success is overshadowed by low response rates. Insufficient immune activation and involvement of multiple immunosuppressive pathways are thought to be the reasons for treatment failure in non-responding patients. To increase the response rates, a combination of immunotherapeutics has been suggested. Research is ongoing to design better and safer combinations by altering dosage or sequence of administration of approved drugs, or by developing new drugs and their combinations.

The purpose of this thematic series, published in Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research, is to summarize some of the highlights of cancer immunotherapy that may provide new opportunities for personalized anti-cancer therapy as well as presenting challenges on the road to the clinic. This thematic series welcomes both reviews and original research articles - please refer to the journal submission guidelines for the criteria of each article type.

Submission deadline: 31st May 2019

Submit your manuscript here using the online submission system. Please indicate in your covering letter that you would like your manuscript to be considered for the ‘Advances in Cancer Immunotherapy’ thematic series.

Modulation of cell surface expression of MHC class I chain-related protein A/B (MICA/B) has been proven to be one of the mechanisms by which tumor cells escape from NK cell-mediated killing. Abnormal metabolic...

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered T cells have displayed outstanding performance in the treatment of patients with hematological malignancies. However, their efficacy against solid tumors has been lar...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal type of cancers, with an overall five-year survival rate of less than 5%. It is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage with limited therapeutic options. To date, no ...

The recent developments in immuno-oncology have opened an unprecedented avenue for the emergence of vaccine strategies. Therapeutic DNA cancer vaccines are now considered a very promising strategy to activate ...

Autophagy, a process for degrading intracellular substances to maintain basal metabolic turnover, is known to be perturbed in gastric cancer. Programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) with its ligand (PD-L1) are importan...

Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy has changed clinical practice for patients with different cancers, since these agents have demonstrated a significant improvement of overall survival and are effective in ma...

Though immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) against PD-1 has shown success in the treatment of lung cancer, not all patients respond. We have previously shown that adoptive transfer of double negative T (DNT) cell...

PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint blockades have achieved significant progress in several kinds of tumours. Pembrolizumab, which targets PD-1, has been approved as a first-line treatment for advanced non-small cell lung c...

Despite the increasing progress in targeted and immune based-directed therapies for other solid organ malignancies, currently there is no targeted therapy available for TNBCs. A number of mechanisms have been ...

Personalized cancer vaccines based on neoantigens have reached the clinical trial stage in melanoma. Different vaccination protocols showed efficacy in preclinical models without a clear indication of the qual...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide. Immune checkpoint blockade therapy, including anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1, is a new therapeutic strategy for cancer...

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive malignancy with poor prognosis, in part because of the current lack of any approved molecularly targeted therapy. We evaluated various combinations of thre...

Abundant evidence shows that triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is heterogeneous, and many efforts have been devoted to identifying TNBC subtypes on the basis of genomic profiling. However, few studies have ...

This commentary wishes to highlight the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to two cancer immunotherapy scientists, Prof James Allison and Prof Tasuku Honjo, for their discovery on unleashing the body’s immun...